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Yes. For all the P2P distributed praise ITT, torrent as a whole, as it is used in the real world, is very centralized. If the Pirate Bay is shut down, that stuf
by bonoboTP 6y ago
Yes. For all the P2P distributed praise ITT, torrent as a whole, as it is used in the real world, is very centralized. If the Pirate Bay is shut down, that stuff is gone.
Uploading became a privilege, something that normal average people don't do. Earlier people ripped their own CDs, DVDs, magazine scans, digitized their VHS, recorded shows with their TV card etc. and shared these files. I don't know anybody who has ever created a torrent themselves. Everybody just downloads and seeds the pre-packaged stuff from the centralized sites, much like the walled garden philosophy of app stores.
- AndrewUnmuted 6y agoIt's fairly uncontroversial that the success of decentralized protocols can promote - and sometimes, even rely upon - centralized points of engagement. But your experiences sound like what goes on in the public trackers. It's reasonable that folks who go to Pirate Bay to get their TV shows are not going to be as engaged as those who go to TVV, MS, or MTV. There's also the security risks of letting untrusted users upload files that may get consumed by thousands of people in the first hour. In private trackers, I have often found that uploading is encouraged, going so far as to provide very detailed guides in their wikis showing how to rip the media, prepare the torrent, and upload it to the tracker. If a better quality version can be uploaded to trump the previous version, that is also encouraged. Learning, quality, and appreciation are cornerstones of the private tracker ecosystem, in my experience.
- dmurray 6y agoThere must be 1000 Pirate Bay mirrors. Many of which served malware or scams on their web properties through ad networks, but faithfully reproduced the torrent database. It was centralization in precisely the way your post doesn't suggest: nothing was irrevocably lost but one wished for a trusted source with curated links to content.
- Semaphor 6y ago> earlier people ripped their own CDs, DVDs, magazine scans, digitized their VHS, recorded shows with their TV card etc. and shared these files. For that, you want Direct Connect [0]. As a one sentence pitch: IRC for file sharing ;) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Connect_(protocol) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Connect_(protocol)
- masklinn 6y agoOr just share magnet links over IRC….
- mmm_grayons 6y agoThere's still an XDCC warez scene, too. Most of the servers are hacked computers, though, and some people have ethical issues with that.
- sudosysgen 6y agoWell, no. If The Pirate Bay shuts down, you still have the hashes and the files are invariably somewhere else too. That, and thousands upon thousands of backups of their database made by thousands of different people.
- GoblinSlayer 6y agoThere are reencodes, translations and unofficial batches.